


Cat Mouth

by jerseydevious



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Marriage, also level: most batcat thing i've ever written, but most importantly level: distressing subject matter check AN for warnings, level: i roasted canon over a fire and ate its flesh, the joe chill of good writing declared me an enemy of the state and murdered me at quiznos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 05:53:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14970485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/pseuds/jerseydevious
Summary: Selina Kyle wanted to look like her mother.





	Cat Mouth

**Author's Note:**

> Sup. So. This is filled with very distressing subject matter. If you have any concerns, I've listed the warnings in the last AN to avoid spoilers. Just hit the link!
> 
> Uh, as for when this takes place in canon, it's, uh, I Don't Know I Was Reading _The Legion of Superheroes_ All Day, Try Again Later. Really. It's a fic that's not Rebirth and not Preboot and not Pre-Crisis. I'll call it Earth Over 9000

Of all the artifacts from her childhood, Selina remembered most clearly her mother’s long mirror. It was cheap and rickety and the glass was covered in a milky white film, framed by cheap yellow bars that listed to the side. Selina had been there when Mom picked it up from the flea market after a fight with Brian. She’d packed Selina, too young to be left alone—or worse, with Brian—into the back seat of the car, pacified her with a hair clip. Selina was gifted with a good imagination, so she slumped in her chair and snapped the clip over her chest, imagining a tiger-patterned fish made of teeth with a silver spring for a spine. While Selina lost herself in the water, Mom ran a red light to the flea market, where she pulled Selina—still snapping the clip—along behind her, until her eyes found the broken old mirror, and she saw herself in its frame. She tucked it under her arm and carried it out with a few terse words paid to the seller. _Mami,_ Selina said, thrusting the hair clip biting into the meat of her thumb. _It’s biting me._

 

Mom would twist and turn in front of her mirror, pinching and pulling her skin as if to arrange it about her more fashionably. Maria Kyle-Langhold was naturally big-boned, had a suppleness to her hips and thighs and breasts that other women didn’t have. Selina liked it. Selina wanted to look like her mother; she wanted her bony, straighter frame to bow out so she could be as soft and kind as her mother was, she wanted her skin to turn as dark as her mother’s. She wanted her eyes to stop being the yellow-green slits they were, and shift into the almond-shaped barn owl-dark eyes her mother had. As Mom turned in the mirror, a slash of a frown across her face, her daughter followed suit, unseen save for her cat-like eyes.

 

Brian didn’t think Mom was beautiful, and Selina knew this because Brian was a loud drunk. Slurred words about her skin, her hair, sharper words about her weight. Mom invested in a wig and covered as much of herself up as she could, but it was the weight that held onto her longest; but it, like her mother’s will, gave way like a spider web covered in heavy dew.

 

Mom cut her chicken into small pieces and took sips of water between every bite and gave her food to the cats. Her skin grew dry and her eyes became heavy as if laden with unseen weights, and she bundled herself in more and more clothes to hide the shivering. She took brightly colored pills and the fat slid off of her as if she’d been dropped in a pan, and it didn’t stop when her ribs crawled up her sides like a xylophone and it didn’t stop when her spine raised and grew mountains and valleys. As Mom thinned out, whittled to a fine slip, Selina followed suit—Selina had always wanted to look like her mother. But her eyes would never be anything other than that yellow-forest-green.

 

She wanted to look like her mother until the night her mother died. It started with a clap of thunder, and Brian’s grating-sandpaper voice, the jiggle of his goatee as spittle flew from his mouth—Selina, unbothered, scooped up the cat and danced back to her room on her toes. Her parents’ voices sounded through the torn wallpaper, so Selina gathered Surnar in her lap and pulled out one of the books the teacher had given her with a plastic smile and read to him. She read the book once, then twice, then three times, then four. By eight, the yelling had faded, and Surnar was a warm puddle in her lap.

 

Selina bundled him up and padded out into the hall, leaning over the corner. _Mami,_ she’d said. Her mother had been sitting in the chair, her long, straight wig framed by yellow from the lamp. Her wrist was laid on the arm of the chair, and what a small thing it was, what a switch of willow or splinter of beech—what a weak stem it had been. Red unspooled from her wrists and through her fingers and down the upholstery and finally to the carpet, where it sank and pooled and formed a lake for fish made of teeth with tiger stripes and wind-up backs.

 

Selina screamed, and no sound came out—but in the secret trapdoor of her voice there was a promise to herself that she and only she would ever know.

 

The orphanage didn’t last long. It didn’t need to.

 

She cut her meager portions into halves, at first, sliding them over to Helen without a word. Then she broke them into thirds, for Helen and Helen’s friend Jane. The longer Selina spent behind the rotting wood and surrounded by walls heavy with sickness, the less she felt inclined to eat—whatever chain had been clipped around her ankle, it had been clipped around her mouth also.

 

It was beneath the water, with it slushing and slopping against her skin through the bag’s pitiful protection, that she decided she’d feast to freedom. She’d eat whatever she wanted. A burger and fries, steak, mozzarella sticks—potato chips, all the potato chips—

 

The night she escaped, she stole something for the first time: a bag of cheesy-o’s. She feasted. She ate better under her own power than she ever did under someone else’s. What she stole was what was hers.

 

-

 

She hated that her first thought was about the dress.

 

It made no sense. She was engaged—it was the happiest night of her life. But Selina rattled off an excuse to Bruce about Holly, about having to go tell Holly, Holly’ll be so excited, don’t look like that, and Bruce understood because he was infuriatingly noble. But Selina had lied, and she’d lied so she could stand in front of a mirror in her underwear and pinch and pull at skin like off-color fabric; as if, arranged properly, she could be satisfied by it. Arranged properly, she could wear the hide of Bast.

 

The next morning, she sorted through her fridge. Bruce had called her—years of fractures had left the small, tiny movements of texting difficult to perform—to tell her he was coming to take her out for lunch, so she set to work on the fridge early.

 

She hung a trashbag on one of the cabinets and tossed the butter and mayonnaise into it. She tiptoed across the kitchen and poured the milk down the sink, not stopping to debate whether any of her cats would want it, knowing it would turn into another temptation. Angel hopped on the counter and _mrrowed_ angrily. Selina rubbed her naked ears, lifted her up, and tucked her beneath a blanket in the living room so she wouldn’t get cold. She went back to the fridge, and poured out her salad dressing.

 

Bruce showed up later as she was flicking through sweatshirts, leaning just past her doorway, inscrutable for all the shadow that enveloped him. Selina would swear that he’d had Zatanna cast a spell on him years ago to magnetize the dark to him, for how easily and simply he lived in it. She had her cats; Bruce had his shadows.

 

“Come in, you creep,” she said, holding a thick, woolly blue one up to her chest. “What do you think?”

 

Mistake to ask. In the dark, she could lie to herself and say he was looking anywhere but at her. Now his gray eyes were on her, and Bruce had this stare that could pierce her like a needle through fabric. It didn’t usually bother her.

 

“Not that cold,” he rumbled. “But cute.”

 

She slid the sweatshirt off its rack. “Says my _fiancé_ in the turtleneck sweater.”

 

She turned around to pull it over her head. If he noticed, and the truly unfortunate thing about Bruce was that he noticed just about everything, he didn’t show it.

 

Bruce moved behind her, hands ghosting over her shoulders. He tilted his head and pressed a kiss to her temple, his breath hot on her ear, his cheek warm against her hair. He was gone as fast as he came, saying, “I’ll be in the car,” in that quiet, weird voice that meant he was trying to be vulnerable.

 

She loved him, but today, the touch made her shudder. She thought about her empty fridge, and steeled herself for lunch.

 

After lunch, Bruce kissed her goodbye—not long, not desperate, simply a sweet tipping of their heads together—and said he’d be quiet for the next day or two. _Undercover,_ he said, lower so no one else could hear, in _that_ growl, and it was so needlessly grumpy she got the sense he’d already asked the universe to stand still, and that plan had failed.

 

Two days was enough. She called Holly, and told her the news, and had to hold the phone away from her ear while Holly shrieked. Holly was the only person she had to tell, but she called the desk at Arkham about Pam and Harley and wished she could tell them, too. She borrowed some of Bruce’s optimism and told herself _someday._ Between the two days, she ate a banana, and kept a jug of water on her hip. She did some running. Some push-ups, some sit-ups. She stopped once and thought of butterless popcorn and a movie with her cats on the couch, and then her mind went to the dress, and she went back to the running.

 

-

 

“Baby blue and eggshell?” she asked.

 

Behind her, Bruce rumbled something unintelligible. Pressed flush against him like this, she could feel what he said more than she could hear it. One of his hands, where his arms were wrapped around her waist, cupped her elbow, thumb stroking the knobby joint through the material of her sweatshirt.

 

“You like purple,” he said. His throat vibrated against her hair. She felt impossibly small, curled up on him like this, and she wondered if this was how cats felt when they were bundled up in warm laps.

 

“You only look good in dark purple, baby,” she said.

 

“Then use dark purple.”

 

“We can’t use dark purple and baby blue, it’ll throw the balance completely.”

 

“Then use dark blue.”

 

Selina considered. “Will that look good with the white?”

 

“Then use black.”

 

Selina chuckled. “Black? For a wedding?”

 

“I like black.”

 

“I know you do, you big loser,” she said. He shifted her in his arms slightly, and a draft of cold air made her shiver.

 

His arms squeezed. “Are you running a fever.”

 

Selina’s brow quirked. “No. You’re just being weird again.”

 

“You’re shivering,” he said. One of his arms raised, and he pressed the soft flesh of the inside of his wrist against her forehead. The movement rucked down his sleeve just a hair, enough for that long thin scar to wink at her.

 

“You’re not warm,” he said, displeased, almost as if he had already been planning to trap her in bed and play nursemaid. Times like these, she distantly wondered about the Robins, about how they had somehow managed to grow up under Bruce’s peculiar brand of protective.

 

“I could’ve told you that,” Selina said, snatching his arm and wrapping it around her. “Less worrying, more cuddling.”

 

“You’re so small,” he said, chin resting on her head. “Can’t stay warm. Like a mouse.”

 

“Yeah, I guess I am,” Selina said, faintly.

 

Something mean crawled up from her bloated guts, and she grabbed Bruce’s wrist with her tiny little paw, the left one, and turned it over. She rolled down the sleeve, unveiling the long and straight and thin white line that split his arm up and down.

 

“My mother killed herself,” she said. “With a razor.”

 

She could see it, in her mind’s eye, red unspooling from Bruce’s curled fingers and dripping steadily to the ground. So slow. So very slow. But Bruce was not Mom; Bruce was economical, pragmatic. Bruce would’ve done it in a bathroom, where the blood would scrub off easily. Would’ve done it in a small, unnoticeable bathroom—Bruce would want his tomb to be unremarkable. Ever the creature of camouflage, sliding as easily into the reaper’s embrace as he slid into the night.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said. The words were genuine, if unsurprised. He knew her story. There was very little he didn’t know.

 

“Not your fault.”

 

“For what it’s worth,” and his hand reached up to wrap around Selina’s, “I’m… happy. That I… didn’t. Failed. I would have regretted… not knowing you.”

 

Selina closed her eyes—the warmth around breathed in and out, shuddered on the exhale like a rusty engine. “Love you,” he said.

 

So rare it was, that he said those words. More often than not he took the letters and tied them together with bits of string, and melted them in a furnace. He poured the molten ore into his hands, and painted with them. He spoke in flicks of his hand. He spoke in wrists held to foreheads. So rare it was, that he said those words—he didn’t need to.

 

“So do I,” she said, and she twisted around to kiss his stubbly jaw. He grunted, pleased. “Now how about you get a pretty suit on and we go out? I’m craving lobster.”

 

Bruce wrinkled his nose. “People,” he said.

 

“I won’t make you leave your dungeon for a whole month.”

 

“Fine.”

 

The only way to lie to Batman was not to lie at all, she had figured. One meal wouldn’t undo her. She could stretch her claws and relax—poached lobster tails, nothing special, just flesh and butter and fat—sluicing down her sides—as if she’d been dropped in a pan—

 

“You are sick,” Bruce said. “You’re just not running a fever.”

 

“I’m not sick,” she snapped, cleaving a chunk of lobster into two halves with her fork. “You’re overprotective.”

 

“No. I’m right. We can take the food back with us.”

 

Selina had asked for a table on the second floor, so at least they’d be alone—and because she was the future Mrs. Wayne, they had obliged. It meant Bruce was free to frown as much as he so pleased, unless the waiter was running by.

 

“You’re not always right,” she said, cutting the lobster again. Just a bite.

 

“Just most of the time,” he said. His mouth quirked at the corner, and despite her rolling twitchy stomach, so did hers.

 

“You’re an arrogant little bitch.”

 

“Yes.”

 

Selina twirled her fork. “Tell me about the kids.”

 

Bruce gave her a dark look—he knew full well she was changing the subject, but he wouldn’t push her any further. Talking about the kids was a weakness of his. “Damian was trying to teach Cass to paint with watercolors the other day.”

 

“And that went badly.”

 

“It went beautifully. She started using her fingers, and he came to me moaning about wasting paint. We ordered him new tubes. And Cass got some acrylics. She’s very talented.”

 

Selina smirked. “And Damian had to deal with it.”

 

“He pouted for an hour. I gave in and let him teach me how to paint, instead,” Bruce said, cutting off a lopsided edge of his chunk of steak, until it was a perfect cube of meat. He plopped it in his mouth, chewed quickly, swallowed. “I am not talented. I tried to paint a bat. I think it was a dead hedgehog.”

 

Selina chuckled.

 

“Damian is a ruthless critic,” Bruce said. “He sent a picture to Dick. I got a call an hour later, and it was just Dick laughing into the speaker before he hung up.”

 

“Good kid,” Selina said.

 

“You just like it when I’m mocked.”

 

Selina shrugged. “Someone has to keep your ego in check.”

 

Bruce’s mouth twisted, a silent, _very funny, Selina._ Then he said: “Did I tell you about what Tim’s up to?”

 

She offered him a no, and Bruce settled into a ramble about Tim’s most recent misadventure. The sunlight flitted over the table, and here and there the corner of Bruce’s mouth would flick upwards. On any other person, it would be a smile, but most days that flick was all he could manage—and it was that flick that made her heart stop. It was that look she had fallen in love with. _Let me see,_ she thought. _Let me try._

 

“Oh, Tim was fine,” she said. “Dinosaurs are just dinosaurs. Dumb as a door knob. And Jiro was there! If you want something _really_ stupid, I should tell you about the time me and Harl tricked Ozzie by swapping costumes.”

 

Bruce’s brow raised, and she settled into a story of her own. She watched that flick turn into an actual smile, just that barest flash of teeth, and feasted.

 

-

 

Bruce used to drink.

 

This, she knew. She’d been to enough galas to know his tolerance was hard-won thing, found in the oily glass bottoms of whiskey bottles. She knew. She knew what it looked like, and it looked like a man shuffled into the bar’s only dark corner, getting a raised eyebrow from the bartender. More than that, it had, at one point, been bad enough that she’d seen him completely wasted—and it was a pretty little punch, to sock the Batman.

 

“You ever consider,” she’d huffed, heaving him onto her couch, “losing fifty odd pounds?”

 

He groaned face-down into her couch pillow. “Trash… can.”

 

It took her a precious moment to figure out what he meant, and then she was darting into the bathroom and shoving her neat little silver trash can under his nose. He brought up stinking bile.

 

“Jesus Christ,” she said. “Fucking hell, Bruce, I’m glad you at least called.”

 

“Al… would b’pissed,” Bruce mumbled. “‘Bout ‘nother DUI.”

 

“Another,” she said, softly. “Been doing that a lot lately, huh.”

 

“Fuck,” Bruce murmured. He rolled over, flat on his back. A strand of spit slapped and stuck to his cheek. “Just a kid… just’a boy. A boy.”

 

With a dawning horror, Selina realized that Bruce was crying—just crystal needles, carving down his temples.

 

“My _son,”_ he said, hoarsely. His voice sounded as if it had been tied to the stake and beaten, flayed until it was a raw, pathetic growl. “He could’a taken anything _—anything—_ else. Anything. I… would’a made it. But my son. My son. Everything…”

 

Selina settled by the couch and stroked a hand through his hair. Between heaving, Bruce choked out, _everything, everything, everything. I miss ‘im. Why couldn’t it’a been me. Shoulda been me… wish… wish I was dead._

 

Bruce used to drink. Selina wasn’t a drinker but she was fond of wine, and she used to rely on him to finish most of the bottle for her; and it had been years after Jason’s death, then, and still Bruce’s world would not turn without his lost son. She reminded herself that Bruce drank because it hurt, and when he was drunk the only person he could hurt was himself. Brian drank to drink and hurt to hurt. It wasn’t the same, she told herself. She had skipped town for two months anyway. When she came back, Bruce looked more exhausted than he had before, like someone had smudged purple ink beneath his eyes, and the stain wouldn’t be rubbed out. But he wouldn’t take a glass of wine from her. She never saw him drink again.

 

(Later, he would thank her. He always thanked her by filling in the gaps in what she knew about him—he knew her story, and she knew a lot of his, but not everything. _I’ve had… problems before. When I was new at this… I was on venom for a while,_ he whispered against her shoulder, neon pink cutting across his temple, flowering over a sweaty curl of hair. _It helped. And then it didn’t. I’m sorry._ She murmured something indistinct, and pulled him closer. _Sorry,_ he said. _Hell Here,_ the sign said.)

 

Her phone vibrated, winking at her from somewhere on the floor. Selina rolled over, unsurprised to find the other side of the bed empty, a leaf of paper scribbled over in Bruce’s cursive. She rooted around the floor.

 

“Good morning, grumpy ass.”

 

_“It’s four.”_

 

“So?”

 

 _“In the_ afternoon.”

 

“So?”

 

_“Hmph.”_

 

Selina slid back beneath the warm covers. “Blame your bed, it’s heaven. When we divorce, I want it.”

 

She had misstepped. There was a beat of uncomfortable silence, and then: _“Selina. Do… you really think we’re going to divorce?”_

 

“Most people do,” Selina said. The hunger gnawed at the lining of her stomach. She was used to it.

 

_“I’m in Russia, where I was flown by the invulnerable alien I call my friend. I’m in head-to-toe kevlar. I’m repairing a jet that’s shaped like a bat. I’m calling my fiancée, who I met for the first time when she was committing a robbery in a catsuit—”_

 

“I get it,” Selina snapped.

 

 _“We’re not most people,”_ Bruce said, softly . _”It doesn’t need to be that way. If you… if you don’t think we can…”_

 

“You know what kills me, about people who talk about Batman,” Selina said. “They think he’s so dark. So pessimistic. You’re the most optimistic man I’ve ever met.”

 

_“You haven’t met Superman?”_

 

“You know what I mean.”

 

_“Honest question. I realize… if we’re getting married, maybe we need…”_

 

Selina’s eyebrows crawled to her hairline. “Are you of all people seriously suggesting date night with your best friend Superman?”

 

_“Well. Yes.”_

 

“I don’t think I could handle the scrutiny.”

 

_“Superman isn’t what you think he is. He’s… he’s better than that. He’s the best man I’ve ever known. He’s more forgiving than I am. Whatever you’ve done, it’s in the past to him.”_

 

“You love him.”

 

_“I… yes. Like… like a brother."_

 

“Oh, great. So when we divorce, you’ve got an almost-brother who can crack planets in half that I’ve pissed off,” Selina said.

 

 _“Selina,”_ Bruce said. His voice was hard and serious as stone. _”This isn’t about us. This about your parents.”_

 

“No. Have you ever seen the statistics? Fifty percent of—”

 

 _“Selina,”_ Bruce said, more intensely this time. _“I’m not ever going to hurt you.”_

 

“I know that!” Selina snapped. “I don’t know what—I know that! I just don’t know what _changed!”_

 

Her voice cracked and flaked and wilted at the end, and she cringed at herself.

 

Bruce was quiet. _“We don’t have to be married. Not if it’s going to hurt you.”_

 

“I want to,” Selina said. “I do. Damn him. I hate him. If he wasn’t dead I’d kill him. I’m sorry, Bruce. I’m not you, I’m not stupidly fucking—noble—I’m not you—”

 

_“I’m glad you aren’t. I’m currently in Russia, freezing my balls off.”_

 

The joke startled a chuckle out of Selina, but it wound out of her quickly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m messing this all up.”

 

_“It… it’s different. For me, too. I keep… I’m paranoid. I called you because I couldn’t stop thinking about… about you being…”_

 

“I’m okay,” she said, with one hand splayed over her chest. Her fingers fit neatly into the canyons between her ribs. “I’m not dead. I can take care of myself, I won’t die the second you leave me."

 

 _“And I know that,”_ Bruce said. _”Or… I should.”_

 

“We’re a mess, aren’t we, sweetheart.”

 

_“Yes. We are.”_

 

“And you still think we’ll last?”

 

_“Yes. I do.”_

 

Lunch, that day, was a grilled salmon sandwich from Alfred.

 

-

 

“Lois,” the woman said, sticking out her hand. “I’m Lois Lane. Reporter for the Daily Planet.”

 

Selina took her hand. The grip was stronger than it looked, and smelled like ginger lotion. “Selina Kyle. Cat burglar.”

 

Lois’s pink lip gloss winked a smile. Bruce cleared his throat.

 

“Formerly,” Selina amended.

 

“Come in, come in!” Lois said. “Dinner will be done soon. It’s a chicken casserole, like Clark’s mother makes, it’s to die for.”

 

Selina smiled with her teeth, and they felt too large and pointy for her mouth. “I’m sure.”

 

Lois shepherded them forward, adjusting her floral blouse. The apartment she shared with Superman was warm and filled with life—pictures everywhere, on everything. There was a boy that looked remarkably like Clark, and a girl with snappy blonde hair, who she assumed were Superboy and Supergirl, respectively. Some of them were even of Bruce and Bruce’s kids, though they were all in various innocuous forms of disguise.

 

“Hello!” Clark Kent, the man they called Superman, hollered from the kitchen. “It’s good to see you again, Selina.”

 

Selina leaned over the counter. “Smells nice, big blue. Since when does Superman cook?”

 

Clark chuckled, wiping a spot off the counter with a corner of a dish cloth. His laugh was infectious.

 

“He’s good at it,” Lois said, moving around the breakfast bar to press a kiss to Clark’s cheek. Clark hummed happily. “I could burn cereal.”

 

“Go sit over there with my idiot fiancé,” Selina said. “He can catch a fish with his bare hands and cook it, but if you put him in a kitchen he loses all sense.”

 

“Hmph,” Bruce said.

 

Clark laughed. “Great, you’re already bullying him, You’ve got it down pat.”

 

Lois herded them again to the table, where Clark served them hearty helpings of casserole—it smelled homey and full of love and grease, it smelled like warmth, it smelled like love. She pushed it around her plate and cut it into smaller bites, she drank a few cups of water, and still it smelled like love.

 

“And then Kara—oh, hold on,” Clark said, rising from the table. “It’s just—my Ma, I’ll be right back.”

 

“Here, I’ll get everyone more drinks while he’s gone,” Lois said, following.

 

When they had disappeared, Bruce nudged her with an elbow. “How are you.”

 

“They’re nice,” Selina said. “You were right, about him. About Superman.”

 

“I was asking about you,” Bruce said. “You haven’t eaten anything.”

 

Any number of things could tip Batman off to a liar. Selina performed exactly five: she looked away; her mouth twitched; her hand fell from the table into her lap; she fell silent; and worst of all, she didn’t catch herself. She kept looking away and she kept twitching.

 

“Selina,” Bruce said.

 

“I’m fine,” she snarled.

 

“Sorry about that!” Clark said, bursting back in with a boyish smile. “She was excited—neighbor’s pig won the blue ribbon after all.”

 

Selina forced herself to eat the tiny bits she’d carved her serving into, as Clark and Lois held up the conversation themselves.

 

After dinner, while they retired to the living room, Selina excused herself to the bathroom. She landed hard on her knees, jabbing a finger down her throat. She vomited up a clot of blood with the love-baked casserole, and she sat there heaving, spit dangling from her mouth, her eyes popping and hurting and swollen like the soft flesh of a cat’s mouth—

 

One hard rap along the door. “Selina. Open the door.”

 

“I’m fine,” she called. Her voice split helplesly.

 

“You’re not,” he said. “You’re sick.”

 

She thought of the dress. She thought of the mirror, of standing in front of it in the long splash of white she thought might be her wedding dress someday, of pouring herself into it—if she could wear the hide of Bast.

 

“Come in,” she said, and Bruce broke the lock.

 

He knelt next to her on the floor, rubbing a broad hand up her back. His fingers caught on the thick fabric of her sweater—she could feel the warmth of them, even through the wool. Always like a furnace, Bruce. She’d fallen in love with his secret warmth.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I… shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have made you come.”

 

“He’s family, to you. _This_ is family to you. Your kids know him, and love him. I should know him,” she said. “It’s… it’s nothing to do with Superman. The man’s a saint.”

 

“Yes,” Bruce said. He watched her intently but gently, and how he managed to be one of the most skilled martial artists the world had ever seen and so damn _gentle,_ she didn’t know.

 

“My father,” she said, “used to tell my mother what she should look like. What her hair should look like, what her skin should look like, what size she should be. But I wanted to look like my mother.”

 

Bruce closed his eyes. He settled on the floor, and pulled her close, until she was sitting in his lap. She curled against him, because he was his furnace self, and he was steady, and she had made a promise to herself a long time ago—one day, she would be safe. She would find somewhere nothing could hurt her, somewhere walled by rock and surrounded by tough seas, and when she found that place she would never, ever leave. And she’d feast.

 

Bruce’s fingers caught her engagement ring, and he started to slide it off her finger. “I want to marry you. But not if… not like this.”

 

She stopped his calloused hand and pushed her engagement ring back along the ridge of bone. “I want this. Damn that man, he’s taken enough from me, and he won’t have this, too. Fuck him. Fuck them all. I do, Bruce Wayne.”

 

She tilted her head back and kissed him. He tasted like Superman’s chicken casserole and strawberry chapstick, and it was a uniquely terrible, graceless, horrifying kiss. It was also theirs.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said.

 

He dropped his head against her chest. “That was disgusting.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I can taste your vomit.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“We’re never doing that again.”

 

“Absolutely.”

 

“I love you.”

 

“I know.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings are as follows: eating disorders, alcoholism, child abuse, spousal abuse, suicide, attempted suicide, depression, substance abuse, frank discussion of child death, and Superman being way too cute. Fun times.
> 
> Lmk if you had an questions, comments, and/or concerns! I'm nervous about this one. In fact, I'm so nervous I didn't even put it through a trial run by my friends first, I just flung it into the world like a hot potato. It's yours now. I'm so sorry.


End file.
